Tag: Economy

Media Statement by Dr. Ong Kian Ming, Member of Parliament for Serdang and Assistant National Director for Political Education for the DAP, on the 27th of February 2018

There has always been this disconnect between the healthy GDP growth figures which Najib and his cabinet like to talk about and the feeling among the people on the street that life is not improving for them. When I examine the car sales figures over the past 5 years, it shows that under Najib’s economy, the rich get richer and buy more Mercedes’ and BMWs while those in the B40 cannot afford to buy cars.

Media Statement by Dr. Ong Kian Ming, Head of the Penang Institute in Kuala Lumpur, and Darshan Joshi, Research Analyst at the Penang Institute in Kuala Lumpur, on the 21st of February 2018

The recent call[1] by noted economist KS Jomo to slash the development expenditure (DE) allocated to the Prime Minister’s department and to scrutinize big infrastructure projects such as the East Coast Rail Line (ECRL) is a timely reminder of an issue that has been previously raised by opposition members of parliament. But what has been lacking thus far is a more systematic analysis of the details of the development expenditure, especially under Prime Minister Najib’s tenure as Finance Minister, and specifically, the DE allocated to the Prime Minister’s Department.

Media Statement by Dr. Ong Kian Ming, Member of Parliament for Serdang and Assistant Political Education Director, on the 9th of January 2018

Malaysia more likely to face a budget crisis than to balance the budget by 2022 or 2023

The recent admission by the Second Minister of Finance Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani that the Malaysian government would not be able to achieve a zero budget deficit by 2020 should not come as a surprise among those who have been studying the Malaysian budget.[1] This is despite the many promises announced by Prime Minister Najib that Malaysia would reach this zero budget deficit by 2020.

Malaysia’s debt service charges increased from RM14.2 billion in 2009 to RM30.8 billion in 2018. The share of the budget to pay for debt service charges has increased from 9.1% in 2009 to 13.2% in 2018 (estimated). (See Figures 1 and 2 below)

Figure 1: Federal Government Operating Expenditure by Object including debt service charges (2009 to 2011)

Figure 2: Federal Government Operating Expenditure by Object including debt service charges (2016 to 2018)

This increase in the debt service charges as a % of the budget should not be surprising given that the growth in the federal debt is much higher than the increase in the federal revenue. From 2009 (Najib became Finance Minister in September 2008) to 2017, the federal debt grew by 89.7% or an annual growth rate of 11.2% compared to a 37.5% growth or an annual growth rate of 4.7% for the federal revenue during this period (see Table 1 and Figure 3 below).

What should be MORE worrying is the fact that payments for debt service charges incurred by 100% owned Ministry of Finance (MoF) Special Purposes Vehicles are also being paid by the government but are being ‘hidden’ in other parts of the budget. For example, payments for strategic sectors have increased from RM1.286 billion in 2017 to RM3.748 billion in 2018 according to the 2018 budget estimates. Included in this payment is a RM1.1 billion payment to Dana Infra / Govco, which is the SPV in charge of issuing debt to finance the MRT lines and also the Pan Borneo Highway. This was verified in a written parliament to me by the Ministry of Finance II dated 29 November 2017 (Appendix 1).

In addition, other repayments (Lain-Lain Bayaran Balik) have also increased from RM1.528 billion in 2017 to RM4.236 billion in 2018. The biggest portion of this payment is for Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) totalling RM3.971 billion (see Appendix 2).

PFIs are actually expenditure for development projects that are funded by 100% owned MOF SPVs such as Pembinaan PFI Sdn Bhd which has accumulated debt of approximately RM26 billion[1] and Pembinaan BLT Sdn Bhd which issued RM10 billion worth of bonds that were to be financed by yearly ‘rental’ payments by the government of Malaysia to fund the building of police quarters.[2]

If we add up these off-budget sheet debt service charges (approximately RM5 billion for 2018), the total debt service charge would be RM35 billion or approximately 15% of the total budget which is just at the threshold under the administrative fiscal rules. (See Figure 4 below)

As the amount of debt issued by 100% MOF owned SPVs continue to increase with projects such as the MRT Line 2 and Line 3, the LRT Line 3 and the Pan Borneo Highway, we can expect the total debt service charges (hidden and non-hidden) to continue to grow faster over the next decade. This can be partly seen in the 21% increase in the debt guaranteed by the federal government from RM187.32 billion at the end of 2016 to RM226.88 billion at the end of September 2017.[4]

I am not against development expenditure which brings long term benefits to the rakyat. But by ‘hiding’ the debt servicing obligations of such expenditure behind these SPVs, we are allowing wastage and corruption in other parts of the operating and development expenditure (under the Prime Minister’s Department, for example) to persist. What is worst for the rakyat is when funding to public higher education institutions and public hospitals are cut in order to pay for these ‘hidden’ debt servicing charges.

If this trend continues, I don’t believe that the government would be able to achieve a zero budget deficit even by 2022 or 2023. In fact, it is much more likely that we will have a budget crisis on our hands as our budget position worsens.